In 1867, Frances Anne Rollin, a Black writer and teacher from South Carolina, traveled to Boston to seek a publisher for her biography of famed Black abolitionist, writer, and Civil War veteran Martin R. Delanythe first full-length biography written by an African American. Beginning in January 1868, Rollin kept a diary while in Boston documenting her progression on Delanys biography, negotiations with publishers, visits from friends, attendance at lectures and readings, and her marriage to William J. Whipper, a Black politician and jurist. Rollins diary is one of the earliest known diaries by a Southern Black woman.In this critical edition Jennifer Putzi offers the first complete transcription and annotation of Rollins diary, along with a robust introduction providing important biographical, historical, cultural, and literary contexts for readers. Rollins diary provides one of the fullest pictures of an African American woman as an author, activist, and well-connected and politically involved individual during the Reconstruction erafilling a gap in the literature and scholarly analysis of such preserved works by nineteenth-century African American women.
